


cor cordium

by aurumstar (shieldivarius)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Angst, Bad end, Body Horror, Choking, Dark fic, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), POV Alternating, POV Second Person, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Sexual Content, Unnamed Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:07:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25833244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/aurumstar
Summary: The dark presses in, threatens to choke you, whispersyou don’t belong hereto the growing seed of the sin eater in your chest.But you, a child of Hydaelyn, have never been a creature of darkness, and have never sought to belong in its embrace. The darkness rejecting you doesn’t matter. After all, you’ve been invited by one of its own.Emet-Selch has offered you dignity, but you have no dignity left. You descend into the Tempest, leaving behind friends and a lover who desperately follow.Set after Mt. Gulg/through the Tempest part of the msq.
Relationships: Alisaie Leveilleur/Warrior of Light, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	1. part i

**Author's Note:**

> The Latin _cor cordium_ translates to heart of hearts.
> 
> With the goal of making the story more accessible, I've worked hard throughout to avoid committing to any defining traits or anything about WoL beyond gender. No tails, scales or heights are described.
> 
> Accompanying playlist for your listening enjoyment (Spotify only, sorry!): <https://tinyurl.com/corcordium>

It isn’t like the Ruby Sea. 

You should’ve been expecting it to be dark as this, darker than the deep trenches you’ve swum down to before—before, in Yanxia, in Doman, when you could’ve accomplished anything, when you hadn’t encountered more than a temporary setback.

When you were invincible.

The Tempest is nothing like the Ruby Sea. The waters are dark, somehow uncorrupted by the eternal daylight above their surface. Even with the Kojin’s blessing, you think you might drown. The dark presses in, threatens to choke you, whispers _you don’t belong here_ to the growing seed of the sin eater in your chest. 

But you, a child of Hydaelyn, have never been a creature of darkness, and have never sought to belong in its embrace. The darkness rejecting you doesn’t matter. After all, you’ve been invited by one of its own. You press on. Ilm by ilm, fulm by fulm, yalm by yalm, leaving behind the primordial Light that fills the arcing sky above Kholusia. 

Perhaps if you change here, at the bottom of the ocean, far from the realms of the Lightwardens fighting for dominance within you, you won’t hurt anyone. No one but Emet-Selch, anyway, and the Ascian has been clear he feels no need to make defence against you. Perhaps once you’ve changed, once the calamity has happened and the First has been rejoined with the Source, he’ll put you out of your misery. 

After all, he won’t need you anymore then.

Something aches deep within you, and you, a warrior who has suffered a hundred injuries, a thousand, can’t identify where the pain is coming from. You didn’t know there were nerve endings in your soul. Perhaps one of the Archons—Y’shtola, or Urianger—could explain where the cracks in your aura intersect with your corporeal aether to cause the pulsing pain in your chest. 

You’re _breaking_. Falling apart from within. Whatever Ryne did to contain the Light within you was a bandage solution at best, and you didn’t rest long enough at the Crystarium after your battle up Mt. Gulg and the fateful fight with Vauthry to recover. There was no _time_ and you had learned as much as you could hope to, after all.

No use wondering what would have happened if your friends had intercepted your leaving. 

It’s too dangerous to travel with them, anyway. If—when—you lose control, when you break down and change, they won’t be strong enough to take you out. And even if they were, you can’t subject them to your fate.

She who defeats a Lightwarden becomes Lightwarden in its place. 

And you always have to be the best at everything.

* * *

_She’s gone._

For as long as she’s known the Warrior of Light, Alisaie’s known she can move quickly when she wants to—when she doesn’t let herself get waylaid by people in need tugging on her heartstrings. She conducts herself with a purpose Alisaie can only hope to one day emulate, one that she’d held up as the gold standard that long year on the First before the Exarch successfully pulled her through and reunited them.

Once, Minfilia, as the Antecedent, was the Scion’s linchpin.

Now, whether she realizes it or not, whether she wants the position or not, the Warrior is.

_Her_ Warrior is.

Or maybe it only looks that way to Alisaie because she feels like she’s lost the ground beneath her feet. She’s standing, and walking, and she’s rather certain she’s engaged in conversation with Y’shtola at this very moment—or at least listening while the others try to work through something—but she won’t retain any of the conversation later.

The bottom of the ocean. She’s gone to the bottom of the ocean by herself—because of course she has, because she can, because she’s retreating to somewhere she can’t harm anyone, like all of those people who came to the Inn looking for peace in their final days.

But instead of peace she’s chosen torture at the hands of Emet-Selch.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Alphinaud’s voice is sharp behind her, and it snaps her back to herself to realize she’s paced away from the group.

Since they’re standing in front of the amaro launch counter and she’d need a hire to get to Kholusia, she doesn’t have a good answer to the question.

“I’m the only other one of us with the Kojin’s blessing. I have to go after her.”

Alphinaud’s eyes go wide, and she focuses on his agape look—a look quickly morphing into another one, one that says he’s about to rail on her for being stupid—because it’s easier to face him and his goofy, dumbstruck expression, than it is to risk meeting the pitying expressions the others have been wearing.

“Not alone, you’re not. We’re going _together_ , haven’t you been listening?”

Not well enough, clearly, but she’s not about to admit it aloud. 

She crosses her arms and leans in toward him, irritation rising over her embarrassment to try and cover it up. “You can barely swim. You certainly can’t breathe underwater, and neither can anyone else.”

“That is _not_ true anymore and-”

“Hey! Not the time!” Thancred shouts.

Urianger clears his throat and she and Alphinaud both snap around to look at him. Alphinaud looks sheepish, and Alisaie is sure her expression is nearly the same.

“I believeth I can offer a way, if thou willst permit it.”

He’s looking at her as he says it, contrition in his eyes. He’s expecting to be denied—perhaps thinks she’ll reject him on their champion’s behalf. But she deserves to address Urianger how she will, it’s not Alisaie’s place. And he owes her Warrior an apology. Needs to beg her forgiveness on bended knee. 

If he can get them to her before it’s too late, then Alisaie is willing to forgive him for his part in making the Warrior leave. But only if.

“What did you have in mind?”

* * *

A kindly Beast Tribe you want to refer to as Sahagin points you to a part of the ocean far from their settlement. You take a meal with them before you go: in part to be polite, to humour their questions about this finless one who can breathe water, and in part because you aren’t sure that Emet-Selch eats. A last meal surrounded by people joyously sharing what they have is one you can hold in your mind, a bright moment that you plan to carry with you into whatever derelict cave the Ascian lives in.

Despite their hospitality, when you move on from the Ondo, you’re alone again. They don’t have any desire to go near the deep trench with the mysteriously glowing lights. Frankly, neither do you, but it’s there you’ll find the Exarch. Even if you accomplish nothing else with the remaining time you’re _you_ , you need to get the Exarch back to the Crystarium.

Emet-Selch, you’re certain, has only taken him to ensure you follow him into the depths anyway. 

So you swim. Deeper and deeper, taking breaks more frequently than you’d be inclined to if there were anyone watching. You can’t tire yourself out now, can’t push yourself, need to keep yourself in one piece for long enough to do one more good thing. 

_One more good thing_.

Carteneau and the Seventh Umbral Calamity were so recently. Empires have risen and fallen in previous Astral eras. For another one to end so soon after being declared…

Your vision blurs, sharpens, then blurs again and you’re plummeting through the air. 

You crash, hard, into a stone boulevard. Winded, chest heaving through the pain pulsing through your side where you landed, you roll over onto your back and stare up. Up and up and up at buildings larger than you ever thought possible, at buildings that looked much, much smaller when you were swimming down toward them.

Amaurot, the Ascian city: hardly the cave in which you’d expected to find Emet-Selch. You should have known better, expected more from the villain who had led the Garlean Empire to what it is today.

You spend another moment lying prone there, trying to figure out where the water went. Maybe you hit a barrier, the edge of a bubble protecting the city below like the one formed to protect the village of Sui-no-Sato. Those transitions had been so much smoother, but you’re almost certainly the only person Emet-Selch has ever invited into his domain so it’s perhaps a lot to expect him to have spared any thought to comfort for the transition. 

You start to sit up and something rolls through your chest, a push of the corrupt aether wrapping around your heart and lungs. You gasp and lay back again, force yourself still, and reach out for every calming technique you’ve ever been taught. _Not now_. _Not yet_. 

One breath. Two.

The Light unfurls, then constricts inside you.

You choke, coughing up bile that drips over your lips and down your cheek. 

The ache in your ribs is starting to subside, and the Light retreats a bit, lets up its compression on your lungs. You wrap your arms around yourself, roll over and pull your knees up to your chest. A tremble wracks itself through your body and your teeth chatter. The receding Light seems to have taken all the warmth from your body, left you feeling so, so cold.

The city blurs, the glowing windows pushing outward and swallowing the stone, the Light in you swallowing your vision until you can barely make out the shape of anything around you. Tears prick the corners of your eyes, and even closing them doesn’t hide the pervasive aether of the world around you. You’re losing control. And, _Twelve_ , you feel so, so alone.

* * *

Alisaie should’ve known something was wrong when her Warrior came looking for comfort instead of hiding away in her room and keeping to herself. A goodbye. It was a goodbye. 

She’s so stupid; she should’ve seen it.

But the Warrior had accepted their mollycoddling. She’d been _present_ , maybe even _hopeful_ and she certainly hadn’t acted even for a moment as though she didn’t think a solution would be found. She hadn’t acted for a moment as though she thought she were actually in danger of becoming a Lightwarden.

Alisaie stumbles over that thought, lost in a moment of her Warrior’s arms ensconcing her in a tight hug, holding her close like she never wanted to leave. Alisaie’s mind hadn’t stopped racing since Vauthry had fallen, she’d been on edge and her Warrior had been so… tactile.

So uncharacteristically tactile.

Alisaie puts a hand to her brow, tugs her bangs between her fingers. So blind. So… so _selfish._

“We must find her.”

The others have been treating her like spun glass, as though she’ll shatter if she’s looked at the wrong way. 

“We will,” Y’shtola says. Her quiet, stubborn confidence is reassuring. How she can remain grounded through everything, especially everything _she’s_ been through, Alisaie doesn’t know. It would be almost too easy to start leaning on her instead of standing on her own two feet.

But stand on her own two feet she must. She can’t afford to fall to pieces now. They’re wasting so much _time_ though, and Alisaie can’t bear it. 

“Why haven’t we seen Emet-Selch?” she asks, though she knows the answer. He doesn’t have any interest in them, that much he made clear. He doesn’t even have an interest in her Warrior, not really. Not any interest further than torturing her into insanity and keeping her as his pet Lightwarden when she’s succumbed. 

A shiver wracks Alisaie’s spine and she clenches her hands into tight balls. She’s witnessed so many people becoming sin eaters. Watched them distance themselves from their friends and families, hoping to spare their loved ones from their change. 

Until Tesleen, she’d thought everyone she knew _stronger_ than that. 

And she’d never expected to stare down a future where even the strongest of all of them was at risk. 

“Because he has what he wants, I’d imagine,” Thancred answers. “And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I would also welcome one of his unscheduled visits right about now.”

Alisaie nods, but her mind is elsewhere, indifferent to the unending sameness of the Tempest’s slippery floor as they trudge along. If she pushes away all the sorrow the last days have brought, worms her way past the worry and anxiety tying her stomach up in knots, she can wrap herself in the warm memory of her Warrior’s hands tracing patterns across her skin, and tangled in loose hair she so rarely unbinds. 

If that night is to be the last time they ever spend together—and she refuses to dwell on it more than that, refuses to focus on the sorrow in the memory, the way her Warrior didn’t quite look her in the eyes, the way her motions were hesitant and aborted when she thought she might do anything that could cause her strain—then Alisaie is going to hold onto it. Forever. 

She’ll remember it over and over until the imprint is seared into her memory. Revisit it until it’s scorched into her flesh.

She will remember her as she was, not as whatever she might become, just like she tried to for all those people at the Inn. The bravery and the sacrifice, not the illness and tragedy that followed.

_“Let me return the favour,” Alisaie kept her voice as playful as she could, but her Warrior shook her head, laughed her off and rolled them so she was on top, completely in control. “Really, you did all the heavy lifting. You always do. Let me have this one.”_

_“Alisaie…” Kisses to her forehead, nose, lips. Alisaie’s eyes drifted shut and she gasped, all arguments gone when her Warrior’s thigh pressed against her already primed and sensitive core and her fingers followed._

Her voice had been so warm. 

_Please don’t let us be too late._

* * *

You find him walking through one of the broad squares, this one empty of the hulking, anonymous robed giants that are the Amaurotines. He hasn’t changed his guise to fit in more here, hasn’t tried to make himself look like these echoes of his past.

On land or at the bottom of the ocean, Emet-Selch looks the same.

It’s comforting.

“So, come to die?”

You stare him down. The bubble of air that’s popped up around his ghastly city doesn’t seem to have affected him. Maybe he could never feel the water at all, and this isn’t any different, but you miss its coolness against your skin, the currents dragging back your hair and slowing your progress forward into the inevitable. However it came about, the air here is unnatural, and you preferred letting schools of fish swarm around you on their way to and fro as you descended. It was better than this stillness, this lack of life. This… ghost town.

“I’ve come for the Exarch. Don’t play games.” Always moving forward toward your goal. Perhaps whatever good you can still accomplish here can even out the horrors to come.

The Eighth Umbral Calamity will happen, and it will be your fault. You, who will rule the primordial Light of the First. You, whose power will inevitably leak back and funnel its might into Black Rose. You, who will strangle the aether of those very people you have gone to war over and over again to protect.

You clench a fist, choke down the thoughts, and let yourself look at Emet-Selch again instead of staring past him. 

He’s smirking.

“Going to be a hero to the end, are you? _Always_ going to be the hero.” There’s a level of derision, disgust, in his voice that you don’t feel as though you’ve earned. He’s still angry, as angry as he was when you first failed to hold Vauthry. You were too tired, and in too much pain then to care to puzzle through it. But now… Now you have nothing but the long wait.

“I’m not going to waste my breath trying to make you understand.”

Fretting over Emet-Selch’s motives hasn’t been something you’ve done much of so far, but it will take your mind off of other things. So you stare him down, study him, and he studies you back. 

“Oh, I _understand_.”

You offer him a bland look. You’ve volunteered for this, waltzed right into his den of stinging nettles fully aware that your last days—maybe hours—of cognisance are going to be full of biting jabs. 

You’ll accept anything over the alternative—over the horrible intrusive thoughts of ripping through your friends becoming reality—and you still have to secure the Exarch’s return. But it’s taken so long to get here, and you don’t know how much time you have left. It’s getting harder to stand, sometimes all it takes is a single stressful thought to upset the aetheric balance within you.

But you keep moving forward.

Always moving forward.

He rolls his eyes, turns his back on you and makes a dismissive gesture. “This selective mute thing you do bores me.”

“Send the Exarch back to the Crystarium.” 

You can practically hear the smile in his voice when he replies. “No.”

You glance down at your feet, collect yourself and get ready to go toe-to-toe with him. At least metaphorically. You’re not deluded enough to think you can fight an Ascian and come out hale on the other side in this state. If you exert yourself too much you can’t even see, never mind take offencive action. 

He glances back at you. “You were gasping for breath and desperately trying not to turn into a sin eater at the time, so let me reiterate this for you.” He pauses, gives you a sweeping head-to-toe and back again gaze. “You are worth _nothing_ to me. The Exarch, at least, still has all the plans for you in that unharmed head of his.” 

You don’t have any intention of illuminating Emet-Selch on the memory the Echo showed you in the Umbilicus, so you keep quiet. 

He smirks. “You should be thanking me for the confirmation that your friend is still alive.”

“I’m sure you would have led with it if he wasn’t.”

He sighs. “You have no appreciation for my sense of drama. Come,” he turns sharply on his heel and strides away, beckoning you to follow. “I won’t let you accuse me of being an ungracious host.”

You let him get ten, twenty fulms away. He doesn’t look back once, apparently confident that you’re going to follow him. And he is, unfortunately, right. Whether or not you want to remain where you are purely to be obstinate is irrelevant. You came here looking for Emet-Selch. Now that he’s shown himself, you can hardly let him get away from you.

It’s just unfortunate that he knows it.

* * *

Whenever Alisaie closes her eyes at night, she inevitably ends up back at the Inn. 

The patients of her dreams were nameless, faceless, up until now. In sleep as in waking, she never served a final meal to the same person twice. Not until Mt. Gulg.

Since then, every night the dreams have been the same. She helps prepare the spiced meat filling for the stuffed cabbage rolls that are her Warrior’s favourite food, and she takes the burden of mixing the poison into the finished meat and wrapping the final roll herself.

She’s always bad at it, the filling falls out on the plate, the roll comes unwrapped as she crosses the craggy enclosure to the patient beds. Her hand shakes, fingers tremble and threaten to drop the plate to the stone and sand below.

But she always makes it, always carries it and delivers it, because she has a duty and a burden that she refuses to let anyone else shoulder.

And the conversation that follows is always the same.

_“You have more time,” she says, holding the plate close to her chest, refusing to hand it over. As long as she holds it, she’s in control._

_“No,” her Warrior shakes her head. “I don’t.” She reaches up, like she might try and take the plate, and Alisaie recoils, still clutching it close._

_“You’re nowhere near—”_

_The Warrior stands, presses gentle fingers to Alisaie’s lips to cut her off. “It isn’t the same.” She runs her hands down Alisaie’s arms, caresses her fingers, and carefully, gently, pries the plate away._

_She glances down at the meal on it and offers a bright smile. “Stuffed highland cabbage!”_

_She looks so delighted, so pleased that Alisaie’s not only remembered but also managed to make the finicky recipe, that it’s as though she’s forgotten entirely that the dish contains an extra ingredient. Alisaie stares after her as she walks over to a table and sits down, cutting into the roll immediately._

_The rapier at her hip is useless. “Don’t—” she sobs, pressing her hands across her lips to choke down the burst of hysterics threatening to spill out of her as the Warrior takes one bite, and then another. Useless. “Please, don’t. We’ll— We’ll find a cure.”_

Sometimes the dream lets her Warrior lie down, the poison coursing through her system, and fall asleep with peace on her face.

Others the poison provokes the Lightwarden into ripping through her and forcing the transformation early.

And in either case Alisaie wakes up with a scream strangling her throat, her pillow wet with tears, her body tense.

It’s no different tonight, except when she rolls over to dry her tears and try to get comfortable again in the bedroll she finds Alphinaud sitting up next to her, bent over a book and a candle so low it’s sputtering and threatening to go out. 

“Why are you awake?” she asks.

“You were having that nightmare again.” He closes his book around his finger. In the dim light she can almost make out the concern in his eyes that echoes the concern in his voice. “Are you going to tell me about it now?”

“You can’t do anything about it. You can’t _politics_ away my nightmares.”

Alphinaud’s face falls and he’s quiet for a moment as he looks around at the rest of their sleeping cohorts. Y’shtola’s bed is empty—it must be her turn for watch. 

“I know. But talking about it might help. She’s our friend, too. Let us share the burden. Or at least… let me?”

She’s had the nightmare too many times for it to fade away on waking and it flashes in her mind: her Warrior giving delighted regard to the platter of food that would end her life. 

Alisaie’s resolve crumbles and she gasps out a sob.

And Alphinaud is there, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her head into his shoulder, dropping his book and almost knocking the candle over in the process. And she tells him. Choking through tears, scarcely able to get more than three words out at a time, she tells him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FFXIV has been my quarantine game; I started playing in April and powered through the whole damn thing. 
> 
> Next part sometime after 5.3 :) Happy maint day!


	2. part ii

“No cell?” The apartment is well-appointed, masculine and dignified—and, you assume, just as much an illusion as the city where it lies. It all looks and feels real enough, the bruises across your ribcage can attest to that, but the way the aether hangs in the air around you, the constant press of it against your skin, makes you suspect otherwise. 

That, and your host is the most powerful Ascian you’ve met to date. The benefits the Echo has always granted you in the past seem to have reached their limit. Pushing yourself to absorb the corrupted aether of the Lightwardens couldn’t have helped. You’re just as much a victim to his illusion as anyone else would be. 

Emet-Selch offers you a disdainful look. “I offered you _dignity,_ but a cell can be arranged if that’s what you would prefer.”

You stare across the table at him, unable to keep yourself from thinking of your private dinner with the Sultana. Maybe it’s no surprise that your thoughts should veer there. You are, after all, dining with the not-so-late Emperor of Garlemald. 

Well, _dining_ is a strong term. He led you to this room with the spread already set up, table set and ready for two. Pointed you to a seat with no fanfare, and proceeded to slouch in his own and watch you.

Neither of you has touched the food.

“It isn’t poisoned, you know.”

When you’d dined with the Ondo you’d been sure you wouldn’t see another piece of food. Resigned yourself to starving in addition to whatever other pain your fated transformation held. The thick-sliced roast, fresh-buttered bread and heap of greens on the plate in front of you don’t change that. The meal is extravagantly plated, and in any other situation would be almost too beautiful to eat.

Here, that beauty makes it untouchable. Artificial. Beyond your assumption of the comfort Emet-Selch afforded himself as Emperor, the food makes you think of Eulmore. And Eulmore makes you think of Vauthry, and his Meol.

You are here for one reason, and you won’t make it easier. You do still have _some_ of your pride.

Emet-Selch pushes his own plate aside so he can lean in. He props his elbow on the table, chin on his hand, and glares across the table at you. You sit back in your chair, abandoning even the pretence of nudging the greens around with your fork. 

“Is that what you want?” he asks. He’s quickly adjusted to speaking into your silences. “Do you want me to drag you into a cell, chain you to the wall, starve and torture you until the creature breaks through your skin?” His voice has dropped, seductive tone suggesting he would be equally happy with that arrangement. You inhale through your nose, continue to meet his eyes, and refuse to blink.

Wearing a smirk, he rises from his chair and rounds the table with slow steps. You follow him with your gaze until you would have to swivel your head to continue. He stops behind your chair, out of sight, and you refuse to turn to look. Refuse to turn, but you’re stiff, still, breathing only the most shallow of breaths.

He touches your shoulder, finger tracing across and up your neck. You gasp, the sharpest, tiniest intake of air. Your eyes are wide and staring, unfocused on the plate still in front of you, all attention on that faint touch.

“I could arrange it, but only I would enjoy it.” His hand slides to the front of your neck and brushes against the skin of your throat before dropping down to rest his fingers on your choker, palm caressing your chest. “Is that what you want?” he repeats. “Or can I offer a more enjoyable option?”

He’s pressing firmly, insistently, on the stone on the choker so it presses into the hollow between your collarbones, just this side of uncomfortable, just this side of choking. You have no delusions about what he’s actually offering. And your heart rate has increased, your breathing resumed but still in short, uneven bursts, lips parted and eyes still wide.

You close your eyes and push away the immediate floating memory of Alisaie that fills the backs of your eyelids. That night before you left the Crystarium… It hadn’t been right to put her at risk for the sake of pleasure, and you’d done everything you could to minimize the danger. His actions confirm the inherent danger she didn’t believe was there.

You hear him shift, move in front of you. Can feel the fabric of his clothes brushing against your legs, and know he’s moved to fully trap you in the chair when the light against the backs of your eyelids changes.

You open your eyes again, find him inches away. He’s done something to his aura, is emitting an intoxicating level of aether, and the monster in your chest stirs, wants to wrap its hands in it. You’re frozen in place, fighting the sin eater, fighting your own reactions to his closeness. 

“You don’t have to martyr yourself, hero. Die in debauchery. You have my word your friends won’t hear a peep of it.” 

The word of an Ascian, and you trust it. You want to laugh aloud at the absurdity of it all, but Emet-Selch hasn’t lied to you. 

No illusions. You knew exactly when you came down here what you were signing up for. Walked willingly into the home of your enemy. 

Retreated from the Crystarium, cowardice gnawing at your gut alongside the throbbing pain of the monster filling your aether, ready to die.

Emet-Selch offers _dignity_ , but you have none left.

“Yes.”

* * *

They’ve nearly reached Amaurot. Without Bismarck’s breath the journey would have been impossible, of course, but even with it, Alisaie can scarcely believe their success. The monsters here are stronger, more wild, than any on the surface, and disturbed by the change in their habitat, the lack of water and drop in their resources, they’re _vicious._

Her blade tastes monster blood, black and white magic race through her, and Alisaie revels in the violence. In being able to work through her anxieties about the future, about everything she can’t control, in this way.

There is something so _satisfying_ about the balance red magic requires. X’rhun Tia’s instruction—when she eventually convinced him to take her as a pupil—had set something free in her, scratched an itch that arcanima had never quite been able to reach. And certainly, it had taken some adjustment for her to adjust her aetherial focus from using the grimoire and the complexity of its equations to the simplicity of the rapier and crystal, but she had gotten it down eventually. Swordplay lessons in her youth, though her style had been _distinctly_ Sharlayan and unsuited to Ala Mhigan art, had more than helped her get a handle on the magic.

That the perfect combination of blade and magic had been lying in wait for her to discover was so serendipitous that it felt as though the hand of fate had opened and offered it up on its palm. And of course her own tenacity had ensured she received full benefit of its offering.

The rapier grounds her in battle and out. 

At least it did, before.

Before.

She takes a sharp breath, focuses on placing one foot in front of the other, and continues her steady march forward. Breaking down on Alphinaud’s shoulder in the middle of the night was more than enough, she doesn’t need a repeat in the middle of the day when they’re in a hurry to reach Amaurot. 

How much more time do they have? Are they already too late?

Without seeing if anything has changed it’s impossible to tell, but no one has sensed any huge aetheric fluctuations that would suggest the world is about to end. 

And surely, _surely_ Emet-Selch would turn up to mock them if they’d already lost. 

“Is that… it?”

As one, they stare upward. Up, up, ever higher, the colossal buildings towering over the cave-riddled trench walls that they’ve traversed to get down here.

The city is impossible. _Impossible_. She’s never seen any place so large. Never seen any architecture so _cold_. So impersonal. 

Dread grows within her. Dread, and apprehension. It will take them _forever_ to search this place. She’d thought—hoped, _prayed_ maybe—that narrowing down the vastness of the Tempest to one search area would mean they’d find her. They’d make it in time. 

But this…

Familiar fear fills her. The same fear that ruled her after Ala Mhigo, before the First, when the Scions were dropping one by one and her constant companion was the terror that she’d be the only one left. The terror that her budding relationship with her Warrior would abruptly be cut short because the Warrior would disappear and leave her there. Alone.

It had scarcely been better that she, Alisaie, was brought to the First before the Exarch succeeded in bringing the Warrior of Light through, but at least she had survived that year knowing that her Warrior was safe on the Source.

But now?

Now all she can do is cling to the certainty in her heart of hearts that her Warrior is still fighting. And pray to the Twelve that they _will_ arrive in time.

“Well, let’s get started,” Thancred says. His voice is full of determination, and a hint of false cheer. “Not going to get anything done standing out here. Stay sharp.”

As one, they step forward.

_For those we have lost. For those we can yet save._

As long as her Warrior is holding out, as long as she’s fighting the change, there’s still a chance.

_Twelve, let there still be a chance._

* * *

_Die in debauchery._

There are worse—and better—ways to die.

He knows exactly where to touch you to set you gasping and writhing. Keeps you trapped under him, lips pressed to your throat, pushing pleasure to pain and back again, and past _too much, too much._ Leaves you senseless, helpless, briefly aware only of the waves of sensation rolling though you, monster suppressed.

And then you’re taking him into you, brutally, and the monster pushes back into your awareness, breaks through with a vengeance. It hurts, it _hurts_ and it shatters the brief respite pleasure has brought.

 _Twelve. Let it end_. Is this better than chains and torture?

“You call me a fragment, a shard, but you don't look anything like these creatures of your memory.” You say it in a whisper, barely able to get the words out, knowing you’re baiting him, trying to lure him into snapping. He’s not going to kill you out of hand, not at this point—and you wouldn’t be able to roll over and take it if he tried—but if you can provoke him into—

He rams his hips against yours, trying to push through you, trying to crush you. 

Your aether feels like knives tearing through your skin, and you gasp because you don’t have the breath to scream.

He leans in, plants a hand next to your face, leans over you so he’s staring right into your eyes.

“We were _gods.”_

His other hand is at your throat, thumb pressing down across your windpipe. You choke, and your vision blanches, Light rushing into it and blocking out everything but the vaguest shape of Emet-Selch’s face above yours. Agony screams through you, your breast being torn up from the inside by claws trying to cut through, back arched like you can escape the stabbing, drilling feathers trying to burst out.

The Light shatters to grainy black and white and the world starts to spin. You shut your eyes, the only refuge you have to get away from it. 

“Submit to it. Your stubbornness is only prolonging your suffering.” You’re losing consciousness, not processing his words right. You can’t be—his voice is too soft. Not gentle—never gentle—but not the mocking, derisive, angry tone he’s taken since you arrived here. Back to his old exasperated, condescending self. “And when it’s all over, when you’ve ensured the Rejoining, I will do my part, and personally usher you into the Lifestream.”

His tool. 

You’re so very good at doing what others request of you.

* * *

The buildings are so tall here, the boulevards so wide, that Alisaie doesn’t feel as though they’re making any progress at all walking through Amaurot. Impatience builds greater and greater in her at the end of each long block. They haven’t seen anyone other than each other and the phantom Amaurotines, and the shades are just that—reflections of the past who can’t tell them a thing about where the Warrior of Light or the Emet-Selch of this time and place might be found.

She’s frustrated and itching for another fight, but since they got out of the cave and away from the monsters within it there’s been nothing standing in their way. The emptiness should be spooking her, and she can tell it’s worrying Thancred. He keeps shifting himself in front of the group, leading the way while trying to look like he’s not, and doing very thorough checks of every alleyway they pass. She’s not spooked, not really. Emet-Selch is putting on a show that she refuses to be cowed by.

They’ve still encountered nothing other than helpful Amaurotines who all seem to think they’re just inquisitive children. That might be the one thing she truly finds unnerving in all of this—that the Ascians came from these people who, for all intents and purposes, look entirely community-minded. They aren’t _evil,_ not anymore than anyone else, and she doesn’t have the mental capacity right now to sit down and try and sort out her feelings on it.

She’s not entirely sure what to think about it all as a result, but she’s sure Alphinaud is going to try and lecture them all on his thoughts sooner or later.

“Ah, the rats have arrived.”

Emet-Selch floats above them, and she sights down the distance in an instant: out of range of her sword but not her magic.

“Where is she!?” Alisaie leaps forward. Her weapon is drawn, Jolt brews and she launches it from her fingertips. The spell hardly travels a foot before it sputters out. 

Emet-Selch hasn’t moved.

“She has no desire to see you.”

“You’re _lying.”_

He rolls his eyes. “What possible motive could there be for me to start lying at this juncture? She left of her own free will. Evaded you intentionally. She _doesn’t want to see you._ ”

“She can tell us that herself!” She lunges forward.

“Alisaie!” Alphinaud grabs her by the arm, jerks her backward and holds her in place. The rest of the group steps forward around them, forming a wall that she’s vaguely aware they’re putting forward to protect her from herself as much as to show solidarity against the Ascian.

His expression turns pitying. “I suppose you feel abandoned, do you? She’s only trying to protect you, but that doesn’t fulfil your selfish need to be with her. How do you think she would feel in those final moments, knowing that her first act would be to rip you apart?”

“That’s _not going to happen._ ” Alisaie’s eyes are burning. Does she sound hysterical? She refuses, abjectly refuses, to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

“No. Because as usual, your precious champion has taken it on herself to do the hard thing no one else wants to do. You could at least show you care enough to respect her last wishes.” He makes a _shoo_ gesture, waving both his hands in front of him. “Go back to the Crystarium. Leave your friend in peace.”

He turns, dismissing them. “Or don’t, I suppose. But making her suffer her last moments with me only for her to fail in averting your deaths by her hand after all seems unspeakably cruel on your part.”

He vanishes.

Alisaie’s knees shake, her legs tremble. She clings to Alphinaud’s shoulder, willing the ground to remain solid under her feet.

“This isn’t the time to take his words to heart,” Y’shtola says. 

“Verily. The future remaineth unwrit. We hath yet to be left passersby to time.”

“Let’s go,” Alisaie says. Her voice is hoarse, her throat feels rough. 

She pushes forward, forces her feet to carry her. Because she needs to. Because her Warrior would. Because she will not let Emet-Selch break her.

* * *

Emet-Selch is gone when you come to, the pain having taken its toll and your mind taking mercy on you and blacking out. You’re drowning in the blankets of a huge bed, the Amaurotine-sized comforter so heavy across your aching body that for a moment you doubt whether you have the strength to get out from under it. You lie there for a while longer, taking in what surroundings you can see, wondering at still not having awoken in a cell somewhere instead of a well-appointed, albeit massively over-sized, bedroom. And dreading, absolutely dreading, inevitably having to look yourself over to see if the change has started. 

“You don’t deserve what you’re doing to yourself.”

You start and glance around wildly, trying to find the source of the voice. When finally you shimmy up a little to escape the confines of the comforter, it’s to see Ardbert sitting some distance away. The bed is so huge you might as well be sitting across a long table from one another.

His expression is gentle, pitying, and you look away as shame rises through you, starting somewhere around the lingering ache between your legs. The rest of you feels as though you’ve gone three rounds with a primal—maybe with Ifrit and Garuda at once. Moving hurts, but you run your hands down your arms anyway, feeling for anything out of place.

“You’re still alright,” Ardbert says. You haven’t looked back at him and you’re half-curled up to boot, as though pressing your legs to your chest will protect you from within.

You’ve never felt so small, and the gargantuan scale of the room isn’t helping.

“You saw?” Shame has colour rushing to your cheeks, and you turn your face into the pillow so your hair hides you from him entirely. _He knows._ _He knows_. Your eyes are burning, stomach roiling, and you’re not sure if you’re going to be sick, start crying, or both.

He rests a hand on your leg through the blanket. A tear rolls down your cheek.

“I’ve told you, I do try to give you some privacy. I have no business watching that, and I didn’t.” He’s trying to be comforting but it’s enough that he knows. “But I don’t need to know the details to recognize that you’re punishing yourself.”

He pauses long enough that you know he’s hoping for a response, but you don’t have anything to say. _Selectively mute_ , Emet-Selch had called you. You’re really more of an action girl. 

“Your friends are on their way. Hold out until they get here, alright? I know I’m not enough.”

That makes you finally look back at him. Not enough? He’s done nothing but stand by your side as you pushed forward and tried to finish what he’d started a hundred years ago. Done nothing but support you even if it meant staring down his own inadequacies. Rooted for you even as you started failing. And he’s still here, even though you’re the creature that’s going to condemn the First to ruin after all. How could he ever think he wasn’t enough?

“Thank you,” you whisper. “You’re more than enough.”

He bows his head, shaking it slowly. You’re quite the pair.

“Come on, voyeur,” you say a moment later, forcing brightness into your voice as you tease him. You wipe the tears off your cheeks, refusing to think too hard about the white tinge to them. It’s so much easier to feign high spirits when someone else is down. “Let’s go learn more about this ancient city.”

He stutters something, and his face has flushed bright red, which seems quite the accomplishment for a spectre. You push back the blankets and Ardbert makes a choking noise and looks away, apparently only just realizing your clothes were across the room and not on you the entire time.

You laugh softly and gear up. 

* * *

They’re jumpy, anxious, reacting to shadows in the wake of Emet-Selch’s appearance. _She’s alive_. He’d confirmed it. 

_She’s alive, and she doesn’t want to see us._

Alisaie’s heart hurts. She wants him to be lying, wants him to have kidnapped her Warrior, dragged her down here, but she knows it isn’t true. 

“Wait,” Y’shtola calls out.

The group stops as one and turns to look at her, at her still posture, narrowed eyes. Her attention is caught on a far building, the right to which Alisaie can dimly make out the pulsing blue glow of an aetheryte. An active aetheryte at the bottom of the ocean? Another of Emet-Selch’s illusions, certainly. 

“What seest thou, milady?” Urianger prompts after a quiet moment.

“It’s her.” There’s hesitation in Y’shtola’s voice, concern in the slight furrow of her brow. “But we should be prepared for the worst.”

 _For the worst_. Y’shtola thought she’d already turned, that the corrupted aether in her had already taken her over and transformed her. And everyone is _looking_ at Alisaie now, as though expecting she might go flying off the handle or breakdown at this announcement.

“She’s stronger than that,” Alisaie says. _And_ I _am stronger than that,_ she reflects. There are things that Y’shtola can’t see, and until they’re standing right in front of the Warrior Alisaie isn’t going to make any assumptions about her state. 

“Of course,” Y’shtola says. Her voice is gentle. 

“Emet-Selch would parade her around if she had turned. His pet Lightwarden. He would want us to know, and would want to see our reactions,” Alphinaud says. He looks at her askance at the end, maybe only realizing belatedly how blunt his words were. But he’s right. Emet-Selch wants their sorrow. He wants them to suffer. He would let them know.

Which means they still have time. 

She scarcely has any sense of its passage down here. The all-encompassing dark vastness of the Tempest’s waters high above them is almost worse than the primordial Light blocking out the rise and fall of the sun, but it can’t have been so long since Emet-Selch departed. They still have time.

Alisaie breaks into a run, ignoring Alphinaud’s shout behind her. 

She skids to a stop in the entryway of the building Y’shtola indicated. The hot prickle of aether dances along her skin. She knows this power, she’s felt it every time they’ve gotten too near a Lightwarden. It isn’t a good sign, but the power isn’t full force. It doesn’t feel as though her skin is going to scorch off if she gets too close.

And there’s no sin eater here. Only a lonely Amaurotine on a bench at the far end of the room. 

The figure turns their head when she enters, regards her from behind the mask. And then nods.

_ <<You have come to watch over her. Good.>> _

“Where…?”

But the Amaurotine man is already rising, and indicates the bench next to him with his hand. Knows exactly why she’s here, without her even managing to get the question out. _ <<She rests. Her soul is tired. Overburdened, I think.>> _

That’s their fault. Her Warrior has only been allowed to rest since Mt. Gulg, since Vauthry, and only then because of the illness. Because they allowed her to push and push and push herself, and encouraged her to ignore the warnings all the way. This is their fault.

Alisaie runs across as the Amaurotine retreats. She rounds the bench, comes at it head on. Presses her fingers to her lips, stifling the gasp that chokes its way out of her throat at sight of the still figure there.

Curled into a ball on the gargantuan bench, she looks… Fragile. Fragile, and with an ivory cast to her skin that’s clear even in the yellow light emitting down from ceilings almost too high to see. 

She’s starting to turn. She’s starting to lose. 

“Alisaie?” Alphinaud, behind her. The Amaurotine is gone when she looks back, only belatedly realizing she should thank him for looking out for the Warrior, if that’s indeed what he’s done. They’re alone.

 _Pull yourself together_.

She approaches the bench, touches her Warrior’s hand, her cheek, her forehead. Bends down and presses a kiss to her hair, heedless of her brother and the others watching.

“We’re here. She’s here,” she calls. “She’s here. She’s still alright.”

They rush over. Y’shtola and Urianger look her over quickly, curative magicks jumping to their fingertips. Ryne lays hands on her, checking her aether levels, discussing something with Y’shtola that Alisaie doesn’t care to follow. 

She sits on the bench with her Warrior’s hand in both of hers—does her best to ignore the elongated fingernails making their slow conversion to claws—and it worries her that her eternally vigilant warrior doesn’t once stir with them gathered around her. 

Worries her that after everything, they might be too late.


	3. part iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for body horror in this chapter, from both second and third person view points.

It isn’t as easy to give in and submit to the inevitable as you’d thought. Or perhaps, not as easy as you’d hoped. 

You’re a fighter. That’s what landed you here in the first place. Always looking for the next great adventure. A high-risk lifestyle that was going to catch up to you sooner or later. 

With the number of people you’ve helped, isn’t this “later”? With all the crafts you’ve learned, the magics at your fingertips, the weapon skills that have hewn your muscles to sinew, haven’t you managed _enough_?

You’d thought it would be over by now. But you’re still hanging on, fighting it, refusing to give in.

Because you’re stubborn.

Because fighting is what you do, even if you can only lose the fight. Even if the battlefield is your own body, your own aether, your own mind. 

You don’t know what you’re looking for as you wander Amaurot. A distraction, maybe, from the now-constant burning pain in your limbs. Your footfalls are loud in your ears in the silent city, but something about it swallows the sound, doesn’t let it echo back to you, and the unnatural muffling reminds you that you’re the only thing alive here.

What a fine prison this will be.

You have to commend Emet-Selch on his cunning, his forethought—his sheer understanding of exactly how your mind works, as loath as you are to admit that he understands you at all. He doesn’t need to lock you up. You aren’t going anywhere. Not now, and certainly not if you keep digging the hole deeper.

An Amaurotine exits the building you’re passing and, on a whim, you veer past them and slip through the door before it can slide shut again. A vast foyer greets you, with sweeping high ceilings and a wall of reception desks at the side. It seems brighter in here than it did outside, yellow-tinged light providing an allover glow. You squint against it, making out seated Amaurotine shades waiting for their turn to be called to the counters, forever trapped in a day-to-day cycle that will never progress beyond this point.

You tilt your head back, trying to make out the high, high ceiling, and the burning in your limbs builds, warns you with a moment’s notice that you’ve passed your exertion point.

Gasping, chest heaving, you lose your footing and fall, hard, to your knees on the floor. The thud of your kneecaps against the stone barely registers against the resumption of the clawing in your chest. On your knees you curl up, hug yourself and bend over, pressing your chest to your arms to your legs, wishing the pain away, fighting for breath, fighting not to bring up the burning Light churning in your stomach.

_No more. No more._

You whimper, tears pricking the corners of your eyes, and Emet-Selch’s name is on your lips, the thought of begging him to end it at the fore of your mind, when a shadow moves into your line of sight.

_ <<Let me help.>> _

You squint upward, trying to focus through the pain. The Amaurotine bends down, extends a hand to you.

_ <<There is no cause for alarm. I am merely a shade. Can you stand?>> _

You raise a hand to him, fending him off, and force yourself to your feet. None of the other Amaurotines you’ve passed have expressed concern, even the ones you had an attack in front of, and that drives you to watch him warily.

He nods, but he’s already creating distance between you, and leads the way over to a bench.

_ <<Emet-Selch will not come here while I am,>> _ he says. _ <<I know this much, and that my name is Hythlodaeus. And you are from a time beyond here.>> _

He pats the bench next to him. _ <<You are in pain. Let me distract you with the tale of Amaurot.>> _

You pull yourself onto the bench and listen to Hythlodaeus speak, his voice even and calm, words giving you something to focus on that isn’t the pain in your body or the new growth at the end of your fingertips. Your eyelids droop, his voice lulling you to security, bone-deep exhaustion letting you trust his promise of safety. You aren’t taking in much of what he’s telling you, barely can acknowledge that he seems to have intimate knowledge of Emet-Selch, that he’s talking to you about the Final Days. 

Your mind is too woozy to focus on it, too gone to take in the information. And Hythlodaeus’s voice, murmuring evenly into your mind, is so soothing. 

_ <<Rest. Your soul is weary. I will look out for you. Rest. My new old friend.>> _

You vaguely register the endearment, try to search back through what he’s told you to try and work through where it came from. But exhaustion has its grip on you.

“You’re safe,” Ardbert whispers. 

The world vanishes, and when it reappears around you, you’re warm and lying on something soft. 

Familiar voices speak quietly around you, and the scent of campfire tickles your nose, and your awareness returns enough to inform you that the soft thing your head is resting on is breathing.

_Alisaie_.

Guilt shudders through you, visceral, chased by the memory of Emet-Selch’s body over yours, and you bolt upright.

Ardbert had told you they were coming, but this… A sick feeling tightens in your gut, your guilt overriding even the discomfort of the Light surrounding your organs. This is too soon. This is far too soon.

* * *

Alisaie jumps at the sudden motion from the still figure in her lap, panic arcing through her at the thought that _something else is wrong_ before she gets a hold of herself. 

“It’s alright. It’s alright,” she croons, realizing that while nothing immediately horrible has happened, her Warrior looks bewildered and unsure and perhaps the slightest bit afraid. “You’re okay. You’re safe. We’re here.”

The Warrior is stiff under her hands, and when Alisaie moves to hug her, to try and offer some warmth into her cold skin— _immediately_ cold, as though she hasn’t been bound in blankets and lying by the fire at all—she pulls away and stands. 

“You shouldn’t have come.”

The rest of the group have realized she’s awake and watch her without moving, as though afraid of startling her into fleeing. If she were to teleport away now, they wouldn’t find her. Not unless her target was the Aetheryte back in Amaurot, and it would be impossible for them to know.

She’s still as a statue, but her eyes are wide and staring. If she looked fragile while she was sleeping, it’s nothing to how she looks now: her lips slightly parted, jaw tight and teeth clearly clenched. She looks _frightened,_ tapped out, with deep bags under her eyes that the marbleizing white cast to her skin does nothing to hide. Over top of it all, her aether is seething and angry, and Alisaie can almost _feel_ it struggling to contain the corruption she’s taken in.

“You need to lie down,” Alisaie says. It takes everything she has to keep uncertainty from colouring her voice, to push away the tremble that worry wants to bring to it. “You need to _rest_.”

The Warrior swings her head back and forth, looks around the cave as though only just now taking in her surroundings. Then she looks at every face around her, and nods to herself.

Alisaie doesn’t know what conclusion she’s come to, but it doesn’t matter. 

“He still has the Exarch.” Her Warrior’s voice is rough. 

“Who you won’t be of any use to while you can barely stand,” Thancred says. “Alisaie is right. You need to lie down.”

She turns, another abrupt, sudden motion, and her aether _crackles_. She’s jerking between movement and stillness like a wild animal, like she’s lost the part of herself that made her stable and sure. A chill runs down Alisaie’s spine. There’s danger in her stance, and she might be unarmed but her pose is threatening all the same.

“There’s no time,” she says, voice still rough. As though hearing it, she clears her throat. She doesn’t sound much better when she speaks again. “The Exarch is still alive, and _I_ am still me. I need to get him out while both those things are still true.”

Uncomfortable silence follows her matter-of-fact statement, the assessment of her fragile state that none of them want to hear aloud. Alisaie can hear an echo of Emet-Selch’s words. _Unspeakably cruel._ Was everyone else hearing him, too? The Warrior doesn’t even seem to be thinking about herself. Hasn’t suggested that she can still be saved.

Alisaie refuses to believe that they’re deluding themselves into believing in a cure. _They have time_.

She’ll repeat it ad infinitum. Over and over. Until it’s no longer true.

“I suppose you have a plan, then? A well-thought out strategy that you can define for us. Certainly, something better than ‘barge into Amaurot’?” Y’shtola asks. 

The stubborn jut to her chin answers that question well enough. She’s going to keep throwing herself at the wall that is the problem until it breaks, or until she does. 

“This is what I have to do.” She doesn’t turn back to them and Alisaie doesn’t dare look away. Everyone’s on tenterhooks, treating her delicately, and as much as Alisaie wants to do the same, they’re obviously failing at getting through to her. 

Alisaie squares her shoulders, steels herself, and stands. “No.”

Something in her voice has caught her Warrior’s attention, and the woman looks back, surprise in her countenance. Alisaie sends a prayer to the Twelve for strength. This woman isn’t the one she fed poison to in her nightmares. She’s obsessive, borderline feral, and _changing_. Turning into a shell of herself, defined by little more than the fight against the Light corruption eating her up inside.

“Alisaie…”

“Don’t _Alisaie_ me! Do you think we haven’t noticed? That we can’t tell how sick you are? That we can’t see that you’ve _started changing?”_ Her voice cracks, and she takes three quick breaths to catch herself. She wants to throw herself forward, cling to those clawed hands, beg her not to leave. 

But that approach isn’t working. 

“We need a _united front_ ,” Alisaie says. “Not you barrelling off on your own, hardly able to stand, fighting yourself as much as anything Emet-Selch throws at you. Why—” She pauses, scowls. “If that’s your approach, _I_ might as well storm in there and challenge him myself!”

Silence follows her outburst, and Alisaie refuses to meet Alphinaud’s gaze, because by the choked noise he made he’s glaring at her and worried she’s going to do something stupid. She wouldn’t really try and take on an Ascian by herself. 

Not unless it was a last resort, anyway.

Finally, _finally_ , her Warrior turns and offers her a tremulous smile, strain in her features like she’s trying to make it reach her face.

“Thank you,” she says. “For caring. But I need you all to leave now. It’s too late for me. I won’t put you in danger.”

_Making her suffer her last moments with me only for her to fail in averting your deaths by her hand after all seems unspeakably cruel on your part._

She walks out of the camp. Alisaie’s feet are rooted to the ground, Emet-Selch’s words playing over and over in her head. 

It’s far too late for her Warrior to hear when she finally whispers, “I will not let you be alone.”

* * *

Alisaie is _warm_. She’s warm and she’s soft and you would curl up in her arms forever if that were an option.

But it isn’t.

And you can’t. 

It isn’t just your fingernails anymore. There’s an itch to your shoulder blades and your shirt sits funny, pulling up in the back. When you touch the nubs appearing there it _hurts,_ so you don’t do it more than twice. 

The change isn’t supposed to be this slow. It’s supposed to be violent and sudden and then _done with_. Not inches at a time, so you can see that you’re losing your body just as you’re losing your sight. Just as you’re losing your friends. Just as you’re losing _yourself_.

The Scions—your friends, you want to _cling_ to them but you _can’t_ —are trailing you at a distance. When you get the Exarch out, they will hurry him back to the Crystarium. You may not have been the hero he thought of you as, in the end, but you will leave your memory on the best note that you can. And you hope you can count on them to get out in time. 

Emet-Selch appears before you the moment you step back into Amaurot. Predictable. Reliable.

Angry, too, judging by the flashing of his eyes, the disgusted rise to his lip.

You watch him warily. That guilt is starting to churn in your gut again, accompanied by the very real possibility that he’ll go against his word and reveal your moment of weakness. 

He meets your gaze and smirks, as though well aware of what you’re thinking.

He probably is.

“I thought we had an _accord.”_ He looks past you, and you plant yourself firmly, trying to gauge the distance between you and the Scions, and the Scions and Emet-Selch, without glancing back to see just how far away they are. 

“We did,” you reply. “But you lied.”

He looks at you. Really looks at you, peering at you like he thinks you’ve gone mad. You haven’t, yet, but you’re teetering close enough to the edge that it’s a valid thing for him to be assessing.

“I beg your pardon?”

You step toward him, close the distance so you’re right up close to him, barely six inches away. You could kiss him, or he could kiss you, and his glance at your lips suggests he’s thinking about it.

“You promised me death,” you say, dropping your voice so there’s no hope of it carrying back to your friends. They don’t need to hear it. They won’t learn of this from you. “' _Die in debauchery,’_ you said. I’m still here.”

There’s a heat in his eyes he isn’t bothering to hide, even as he rolls them in exasperation. “I made an offer, not a promise.” He catches your hand in his and you tense, but fight against the urge to look back, and refuse to pull away. His thumb strokes over your fingernails. “And I’m more than willing to welcome you back for another round.”

It’s tempting, for the relief he brought you if nothing else. “You underestimated me.”

He snorts. “Of the two of us, who has claws?” 

You try and haul your hand back but he keeps it firm in his. You curl your fingers downward, press your nails into his skin. He lets out a hiss of pleasure, grabs for your other, fisted hand. “Oh, don’t hide them on my account, hero,” he says, and pushes your fist open so both your hands are open in his. 

You look down at your hands because the alternative is watching him gloat. Your nails have taken on an iridescence, ivory teasing gold with the play of the light, the previously short-trimmed, white edges turned pointed and shining as though gilded.

“Beautiful,” Emet-Selch breathes, heavy with desire. He drops one of your hands, brushes hair out of your face. “You truly will be a beautiful creature.”

You shiver.

“Get _away_ from her!” 

_Alisaie_. Twelve, she’s _impossible_ (and you knew that and guilt crawls in your chest again because you _adore_ her for it but are standing too close to the one you were unfaithful with) _._ You send Emet-Selch a warning glance, which he ignores as he steps around you and pushes you aside.

“I don’t remember inviting you here,” he says, boredom layering his voice. “Really, it’s rude to show up uninvited at someone’s doorstep.”

“Kidnapping isn’t exactly high on the list of virtuous activities, either,” Thancred says. 

It feels like there’s a block in your mind, something stopping you from reacting as you usually would. Stopping you from taking control of the situation, from being able to _end this_.

Ardbert appears behind Emet-Selch, and you watch him over his right shoulder. A steady, sure presence. It’s comforting, how willing he is to go down this road with you.

Emet-Selch tosses his hands up, gesture dismissing the Scions altogether. “I didn’t _kidnap_ your _precious_ Warrior of Light.”

“He means the Exarch,” you say quietly. He waves a hand, brushing you off, too. Then shifts, phases out of the air and teleports behind you. He crushes you to his chest, knocking you breathless and setting off a spiral of prickling pain stabbing out from the nascent appendages on your back. Tears spring to your eyes and you fight not to let them fall.

His lips touch your neck, a gentle touch you cling to in the face of the pain. Your eyes flutter closed but your breathing picks up, short breaths as your lungs recover from him grabbing you, growing more and more panicked as you register what the pair of you must look like.

“So determined to save everyone even when they aren’t at all interested in saving you.”

“That’s clearly not the case,” you say.

He laughs softly in your ear. “I was referring to the Exarch,” he says in echo. 

You have no energy to argue with him, no energy for the verbal sparring he so clearly wants. You shake your head instead. It feels like surrender. Maybe it is.

He scoffs. “Oh, hero. Such a tragic end.” He strokes your hair and you whimper and try to pull away to no avail. Too familiar. Too intimate. “I truly did have such _high_ hopes for you.” You want to pull away but you’re limp in surrender, too in pain, too exhausted, to fight. He hasn’t revealed what you did and for the moment you can take solace in knowing that your memory will at least be unsullied in that way.

He speaks past you. “Follow, if you _truly_ feel the need to drag her misery out further.”

It’s all the notice you get to shut your eyes and attempt to gird against the nausea of being pulled into a teleport you don’t control. 

_Let this end._

_Twelve, let this end._

* * *

Alisaie shrieks. She _shrieks_ but Amaurot is a vacuum for sound and her voice fails to bounce back, doesn’t give her the satisfaction of amplifying and echoing her pain through the city.

“How _dare_ he?!” 

Everyone else is silent. Looking at her. Waiting for her to get her bearings so that they can pursue. Or maybe they’re just as shaken, just as _outraged_ by the Ascian’s careless handling of their friend that they need a moment to recover as well. 

Her eyes are burning and she swipes away the tears threatening to fall. Frustration, fear, anger, despair. She clings to the anger. To give in to any of the other emotions churning through her would leave her here wailing, despondent, in the middle of the Tempest and that would render her no good to anyone.

“Let’s go,” she says. It’s obvious where he’s gone. One of the buildings glows, standing out from the others, a torch ensconced in amber flame. 

They let her lead.

The rage barely contained within her has Alisaie trembling with every step but her hands are steady where they support rapier and crystal. Her spells fly true and her blade bites deep and vicious, chewing through the obstacle of world’s end that Emet-Selch throws between them and their goal.

_Regardless of circumstance, a Red Mage must strive to achieve the greatest good._

X’rhun Tia’s words echo in her head when she starts to tire, thinks she might falter. And she holds her Warrior’s smile—not the tired, wan expression she’s been wearing since her arrival on the First, but her true smile—in her mind’s eye. They’ve come too far to fail.

Emet-Selch’s Amaurot is falling down around them, but Alisaie has no interest in listening to his attempted tragic retelling of it. Whatever sense of irony, or of an eye for an eye that he’s going for will find no purchase with her.

They fight on in silence but for the sounds of battle exertion, the occasional confirmation that everyone remains as hale as they can. 

An incline upward leads them to where the city falls away, leaves them standing on a fragment of earth, stranded in an ocean of stars. They’re still at the bottom of the Tempest, still on the First, and this is a grand illusion of Emet-Selch’s design, but Alisaie keeps to the centre of the narrow path anyway.

The chaos of battle has kept her focus, her attention, zeroed in on _one more step. One more enemy. One more, one more._

But there’s no more path ahead of them, only a drop that, illusion or no, would surely end in death, and the impossible expanse of stars swirling around. The end of the road at the expiration of Emet-Selch’s ancient world.

“And so, at this, the very end, you would continue to add to her agony.”

The air in front of them shimmers and Emet-Selch appears, floating some three feet above the ground. Above the ground, and above her Warrior, who lies curled in a ball beneath him. 

A choked gasp tears itself from Alisaie’s throat and her tunnel vision shatters, loosing the tears it’s been helping her holding back. She sobs and tries to run forward, and her throat burns as though her cry cut on its way out.

Fingers around her arm stop her, haul her back.

The Warrior spasms and lets out an inhuman wail. She’s paler than she was, and trembling, with a small, half bent wing draped over one shoulder and hiding her face like she’s trying to protect herself—or protect others from her. 

Alisaie doesn’t know who’s holding her, can’t bring herself to look anywhere but at the broken woman in front of them. How could so much have changed so quickly? _How are they too late?_

Another agonized cry, like her very vocal chords are being torn, rips from her Warrior’s throat again, and the wing lifts, just enough to reveal her face. Sweeping golden lashes on eyes partially closed and unseeing. Lips like liquid gold. 

Alisaie’s knees give out. _“_ No, _NO!”_

And above them, Emet-Selch begins to laugh.

* * *

Something is happening above you but the world has disappeared. All that remains is pain. 

_Pain…_ and Ardbert kneeling in front of you, just visible through the slit beneath your heavy eyelids. 

He seems to be crying.

Your imagination, surely. Your vision is too far gone to tell.

“You did everything right,” Ardbert whispers. 

Just as he had.

Two parts of the same soul. 

A Warrior of Darkness of the First.

Doomed to the same fate.

Tears course down your cheeks. Your body is ensconced in fire, a thousand times hotter than being face-to-face with Ifrit’s flames. Skin melting off like wax, sloughing the layers remaining of your humanity from the porcelain monster beneath.

The pain of the change is unbearable.

The guilt is almost worse.

_I’m sorry_ sits unspoken on your tongue, control over your voice gone. Or maybe the lump in your throat is merely too large to speak around.

You let go.

  
  


* * *

The noise is unbearable, and Alisaie curls in on herself and wraps her arms around her head to try and block the screams, the crunch of bones breaking, the wet noises of skin and other parts falling to smack the ground, from her ears. She can’t bear to watch, but forces herself to anyway.

The least she can do to honour her Warrior’s last moments, even if she can barely see through the tears.

_I knew what could happen. I should never have let you do this._

As though she could have stopped it.

_I’m sorry for being too weak to give you the peace you deserve._

Someone is holding her and she tries to pull away, tries to escape the comfort, but their arms are tight as vices and she’s lost all strength. All willingness to fight.

The screaming stops, and Alisaie has looked away again and has to force herself to look up.

The Lightwarden rears, flares her wings and springs into the air. Sprightly. Beautiful. With a bare chest and a sarong of feathers, all trimmed in gold.

And Alisaie can see her Warrior in the monster’s body. The swell of her breasts, the way she holds the sword in her hand. The bow on her back, grimoire at her hip, half a dozen other weapons that Alisaie can’t isolate in golden tattoos across her skin.

“You should run now,” Emet-Selch suggests. He’s gazing at his gloves, looking bored. “I’ll even give you a head start. In her honour, of course.”

Alisaie is lifted, bodily, and whoever is carrying her throws her over their shoulder and takes off at a run. 

She can’t take her eyes off of the Lightwarden. The Lightwarden, who Emet-Selch is holding back with a gesture.

_Emet-Selch would parade her around if she had turned. His pet Lightwarden._ Alphinaud’s words.

She meets the Ascian’s eyes and he smiles, cruelty in every line of it, and gestures to the monster beside him.

“Chase.”


End file.
